


In her kiss I taste the revolution

by spacemagic



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Genre: F/F, Femslash, everyone in space is gay, everyone in space is radical, femslash february TRY FEMSLASH APRIL, jyeia, jynleia, lesbian Jyn Erso, sapphic Leia Organa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 18:20:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6530953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemagic/pseuds/spacemagic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're both young, a bit wild, and they fall in love between stolen glances, with hunger for more - more kisses, more rebellion. They're made of fire and fury, the both of them. But Leia - Leia has a heart and a softness she didn't expect, didn't know she needed.</p><p>Your name is Jyn Erso, she says to her. And that's enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In her kiss I taste the revolution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crystaltongues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystaltongues/gifts).



 

"They have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win." 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

... before her, I was part whirlwind. raging, without direction.

 

 

‘...it's not enough,’ I say to her, as I pluck that hairpin which keeps everything neatly in its place, and ribbons fall through my fingers. ‘I want more.’

 

 

There are a thousand dull stories about little girls with muddy feet and grimy fingers that pry and pluck at as many secrets as they can carry in between their lips, for they have no mothers to thread tales for them. You can pick one. It doesn't matter which one I am.

I was - I am a template. Maybe I'm your petty thief, a little sneak, a pretty liar, made of fingertips, pulling at what is yours by right (but I want more, more than legal rights and legal wrongs and legal means and big square legal buildings with big square legal senate meetings), clawing at what's left loose and free, unpicking the hem of an imperial tapestry with a matchstick. Or perhaps I'm your young, half-blazing revolutionary, a firework that went off too early, hissing in the water as the Imperials tear my hair off, your dead body count, your stone war memorials. You can pick one. Your decision.

And you can skirt right over all those messy details – nobody cares about them, the torn hand-me-down scarf, the bitten nails, the blood on the corner of the tatty old jacket that won't quite wash out, the scars on the back of my hands that haven't faded. I have no lineage of dark riches and soft dreams, no star maps to salvation inscribed in my blood, I am not made of princesses and queens, I have no secrets and legends of my own that I can give. there is nothing permanent here. my history belongs to others.

 

I had nothing but the chains at my neck and the hands that I use to break them.

 

 

‘I know,’ she says to me, as if it's a promise, as if it's a dare, as she pulls me from the loose shirt low at my hips to her lips into her kisses again.

Her kisses are rough, unedited, and I love them.

 

 

 _I know_.

 

 

… before her, I honestly didn't think I was important until I met her.

 

 

‘You,’ she says to me, her lips close, her hands cradling mine, and then she whispers my name like it's sacred, ‘are precious to me.’

 

And I know she means that. That I have meaning and significance of my own. That she values me beyond what I can dream. Treasures it. I know that I'm not a precious stone, a diamond in the rough of war, a discarded ornament she took for herself, I’m not an elaborate artwork, or a muse, to hang up by a thread in her drawing room to offer incisive political commentary. I don't have a numerical value anymore. I don't want to belong to anyone.

 

I told her that the first time we met.

 

 

‘He was property. Expensive property, but still property.’

‘Under the Imperials?’

‘No, before.’

‘Ah.’

 

She had known the situation well enough to ask.

 

‘I don’t want another bloody Republic. I don’t want to break my back in order to collect crumbs at the end of the week. I want better than that. I want more.’

 

She nods. The slightest of smiles crosses her face. A touch of warmth she holds to herself. A secret.

‘Good,’ she says. ‘We’ll get on.’

I wanted more.

 

 

It began with stolen glances. I wasn't proper like her. I never learnt how not to stare.

She wasn't all that proper either, it turned out.

 

‘ _Propriety?_ ’ Her nose crinkles up and she snorts with laughter, loud and shrill and unrefined. I love it, it’s so beautiful. The clerk marching down the hallway turns their head and stares. She ignores them completely and I can’t stop myself grinning. 'Propriety,’ she says. ‘That bucket of bantha fodder can wait.’

‘Until when?’

‘Never.’

 

She'd catch my glances between stray words or clutches of hair that fell loose or ribbons of blaster fire. She'd steal looks back and grin.

She only wore serious looks - the smiles were all exceptions (and all for me).

And I'd take it off her lips the second she said 'yes,' the second she could catch her breath between the battlefield and the boardroom.

 

Such a sneak.

 

We stole touches and kisses between secret meetings, secret supply runs, secret closets and cockpits and hidden storage compartments. 

'I'm a rebel,' she whispers to me, grinning wickedly, as I kiss gently down into her neck, fingernails at her back, the upstanding imperial senator of Alderaan in the clutches of the young, dashing rogue with bright eyes. Scandalous. 'I hate the Empire,' she murmurs, as her neat hands swiftly unbutton my shirt. 'And I hate the senate. I hate the corruption, I hate the bureaucracy, and -'

I bite, and she can't stifle her moan. She's always so loud. I smile pleasantly, and ask:

‘You were saying?’

‘I – I can’t stand it anymore. I want to tear it all down. Burn it. I don’t care.’

And then she kisses me back, finally, and it's rough and it's hot, and sudden, pulling my hair and biting my lips and my collarbone and my breasts – _stars_ – and I swear, as wild as it sounds, two teenagers in a closet thousands of miles in deep space, half undressed, covered in bruises and burns from battles we shouldn’t be fighting, I can taste the revolution in her kiss, I can taste the fire and the fury and the colour red, and at that point she's not a leader, but another pair of boots in the crowd as it roars, a thousand raised fists in the air, and I can feel the shaking heartbeat of another unnamed rebel, aching to be set free.

 

She didn't soften herself for anyone, not even me.

 

 

‘I want to see the sunlight from the undercity again. I want the people – ordinary people, real people – to know power and justice, I want politics to _mean_ something to them. Like you mean something to me.’

And she kisses every bruise and bite and scar cut into my body, every wound I brought on myself in order to make the world a little bit wilder.

 

 

‘It’s like love, to you?’

‘It can’t all be hate. Otherwise – you know, I think I would break.’

 

 

I can’t imagine the Princess breaking.

 

 

That’s a lie. Two lies, in fact.

 

 

Lie Number One.

‘I have a secret,’ she tells me, as if it’s not actually a particularly interesting piece of information at all, after a particularly gruelling debate session on the Alliance’s position on internal democracy. As a representative of the red faction, she is pushing for the dissolution of the central committee and instead the adoption of a horizontal hierarchy, between equals.

‘Tell me,’ I say.

She leans close, brushing my cheek, and whispers: ‘I’m not actually a princess, you know.’

‘Oh. That. I already knew,’ I say, with a shrug and an easy smile. I wonder if her parents are anything like mine. (They could be.)

She punches me in the shoulder. I laugh.

 

 

Lie Number Two.

I’ve seen her break. She’s not porcelain, but she isn’t steel either (she wishes, though, she could be steel, she wishes her spine was made of diamonds, that she could withstand the fury of the Empire for us all with the coldest gaze).

I’ve felt her heart flutter – and almost fall. I’ve seen her watch starships collide and planets shudder and thousands die wordlessly as the Imperial Fleet storms through them and she weathers it, it grates and hurts but she weathers it, but her shoulders slump just a little, and the smiles are tougher and harder and fiercer. It’s all a bloody spectacle.

 

Yet she still cries when she sees all my scars for the first time.

She cries on more than one occasion.

They’re angry, loud tears. She shudders violently with each sob as if she’s crying for us both.

 

‘Look at me. Look. You’ll get killed,’ and she whispers my name again – ‘ _Please_. I get duty, and I get necessary risk, but this is _reckless._ ’

‘I _am_ reckless,’ and I grin, as if I don’t mean anything. ‘That’s why you like me.’

She looks at me with barely contained disgust. (And confusion. And fear.)

‘You keep throwing yourself straight into enemy fire as if it means nothing.’

‘I can hack it.’

She shakes her head. That’s a lie. We both know it’s a lie. Number Three.

‘You’re not _artillery._ You’re not _disposable._ I don’t want any kind of revolution that requires us to break and burnt out.’

‘I’m still doing it _._ This mission is too important. _Rogue One_ is too important.’

‘You won’t to live to see the results.’

‘That’s just pessimistic,’ and I pout.

Like a child.

I’m not taking this seriously. I’m never taking this seriously. Damn, I laugh in the face of tyranny. I don’t have a spine of diamonds or a face of steel. I’m just a teenager, a stupid kid. And part of me is still convinced I’m still just a secondary character, a lengthy footnote, a name and nothing much else.

‘I want more, Leia,’ I say.

‘Then I won’t stop you,’ she says, her fingers cradling my face gently.

 

This feels like a dream. Her touch. Her embrace. Special things not meant for scum like me.

(I’m worthless, the voices say, the product of a dead woman and a slave, doesn’t belong to anything or to anywhere, and I wish it were all a dream).

 

Perhaps I want to die. Perhaps I’ve always wanted to die each and every time my fingers are in someone else’s pockets, pinching a secret or a story or something belonging to something else.

 

_I’m reckless._

 

She looks at me later in the half-light of the dawn. Everything’s golden, and the warmth under the sheets… I don’t have to get up for a few more hours yet. I can savour things as they are. I wonder this is what freedom feels like. I wonder this is what ‘life after the revolution’ will mean. Not on the clock. Not counting the hours. Not wanting the work to end, but to begin.

 

 

‘I love you,’ she says, with all her sincerity.

‘I know,’ I say. It's a promise.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The next time I see her I’m decked out in Imperial Navy uniform, special ops., officer class, sharply cut with a red sash, polished boots. There are two blaster pistols swinging at my hip, and they feel heavier than usual. The lights in the corridor towards the prison block flicker as I step forwards.

I try not to shake.

I key in the code to cell 2187.

In this very drab and very cold and insufferably _Imperial_ prison cell, is a traitor. Her name is Leia Organa. Incriminating activities include aiding multiple rebel supply runs, spying on the Imperial Senate, and close relations with the notorious rebel cell, _Rogue One._

I lean against the cell door.

I say to her: ‘I’m Jyn Erso, and I’m here to rescue you.’

She smiles at me as if I’m made of stars. My name is Jyn Erso, and I know now, that's enough. I grab her hand, hand her a blaster, and we run together.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I said I was going to post another chapter of 'seeds of darkness' but then the rogue one trailer came out and I _had_ to write this.
> 
> Title - and the whole fic, actually, - inspired by [this tumblr post](http://darthbanes.tumblr.com/post/142481729780). 
> 
> Two of my favourite headcanons here: radical Leia, and sapphic Leia. Combined with a bunch of made up shit about Jyn Erso. 
> 
> I actually had to cut back on that, although if you're interested in more about Jyn's dad, feel free to ask. I have a whole backstory for Jyn I've only just hinted at here.


End file.
